Touch
by RowanDarkstar
Summary: "So, it was Regina who was close by when Emma startled to consciousness." - A brief moment a day or two after 'Queen of Hearts'.


**DISCLAIMER:** "Once Upon a Time" and all its wonderful characters belong to ABC and Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, etc.. I borrow them only with love.

Beta Love to Helenhighwater7 and General Reading And Support Love to choraii.:)

**"Touch"**  
by  
Rowan Darkstar  
Copyright (c) 2012

The moment was so brief. Strange, how actions lasting hours could slip from memory like satin through fumbling fingers, while the smallest gestures could burn like beacons through perception and memory.

So much had happened in the preceding days (and weeks), Emma was still uncertain of what was real and where her dreams were tangling up with reality. Nothing followed the rules of the known world, anymore.

A plan to protect Henry had turned into an all night planning session to protect them all from Cora. The adults had gathered in the Sheriff's office (and didn't all of that feel like a lifetime ago, playing Sheriff in a small town in Maine, like she wasn't the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming), while Henry slept in a spare bed at Granny's up the street. Red had walked him over and stayed with him until he was out.

In the end, exhausted from days upon weeks of insanity, it was Emma who had fallen asleep with her head on her desk during a lull in the talk as her parents and some dwarves and the Evil Queen moved around her. Being awake felt more like a dream these days.

The nightmare was unexpected. Henry. Fire. Cora and the breath being pulled from Emma's chest by some sort of green, slithering mist, coiling like a serpent around her lungs. Trying to reach Henry, unable to breathe, unable to move. Screaming.

She jerked awake to a dimly lit Sheriff's office. The crowd had thinned, leaving only her father in a distant corner, a dwarf somewhere, and Regina seated on the edge of Emma's desk. So, it was Regina who was close by when Emma startled to consciousness. A night-softened Regina, suit jacket loose around her shoulders and make-up faded and slightly smudged at the corners of her chocolate eyes.

The former Mayor gazed down at Emma with a soft crease of concern on her brow. "Are you all right?" she asked, voice hoarse from the late hour, the days of worry. The intimacy of the tone, the unexpected familiarity was strangely comforting.

Emma felt her father on the alert, watching from the corner. But he did not take more than a step closer. This truce was disorienting. Emma was not unaware of the shift that had taken place in her absence.

She drew a deep breath, clearing the fuzzy pieces of the dream from the edges of her vision. She stretched her cramped shoulder. "Yeah," she said softly. "Just...not so hot dream."

Regina nodded, expression still softly concerned, lacking the sarcasm that had once clouded every breath between the two women. "My mother has that effect on people," Regina said at last, a simple and brutal statement.

Emma released a huff of breath through her nose and rubbed at her sleep-wrinkled cheek.

The moment was brief. Not looking at Emma, turning to face the far wall, shifting as she was about to rise from her place on the desk, Regina reached out and cradled a comforting hand to the back of Emma's head. Her touch lingered for a moment, then she moved her fingers in a tender stroke down Emma's hair as she straightened to stand. Regina moved away from the desk.

Emma held her breath. The touch had been so maternal. Warm. The kind of touch Emma had felt so rarely in her life, the kind she had dreamt about in the late night moments when she had allowed herself to wish for her real parents, to wish they had loved her enough, to wish they would come and rescue her, sweep her away to her happy ending. Regina was her little boy's mother.

The comforting caress lingering on Emma's scalp had been long-practiced custom, simple instinct. Something Regina had done so many times that on this late, tired night she had acted before remembering why perhaps she should not.

Because of Henry.

Night terrors and disappointments and disillusionments and illnesses and fears. That beautifully warm touch had stabilized Henry's days and nights from the tender age of three weeks old. Emma watched as the darker woman strolled lethargically across the room, slipped her arms into the sleeves of her suit jacket.

"I think we've done enough for tonight," Regina said quietly to David, and Emma's father nodded. Regina tucked her hands into her coat pockets and stared down at her heeled boots.

Emma could not pull her eyes from Regina.

Some moments were so brief.

#


End file.
